A Game with Sharpened Knives. By Neil Belton

A Game with Sharpened Knives

Neil Belton

Phoenix Paperback. First published 2005.

Belton takes the facts from a couple of years Erwin Schrodinger's life in the early 1940's and weaves a fascinating tale with it, equally of history, politics, diplomacy, psychology, social drama and human relations.

Schrodinger is best known among students of science, particularly physics, for his equation. This equation reconciles the wave nature of elementary particles such as electrons and protons, with their simultaneous particle nature. Until this equation came along, physicists were floundering to make sense of the experimental observations of numerous phenomena, each of which could be explained only with a different set of equations. Schrodinger's 'wave equation' as it is called, makes it possible to set up a single set of equations, the solutions of which yield predictive descriptions of all manner of physical phenomena, ranging from the subatomic to the macroscopic scales. (Newton's equations, commonly used to make calculations at 'human' scales have been shown to be a special case of Schrodinger's equations.)

The equation makes it possible to calculate all the measurable physical properties of a subatomic particle, or a set of subatomic particles. However, the physical interpretation of the descriptor, called the wave function, of such a particle that occurs in the equation is, even today, a matter of controversy, much more so immediately following the publication, in 1926, of the equation. Schrodinger himself did not much like the popular statistical interpretation of the wave function as a probability wave. In the book, his struggle to find a satisfactory explanation, and at the same time extend the validity of the equation to explain relativistic phenomena, as well as phenomena at the largest scales of the Universe, forms a strong, though minor, vein. Described in the same vein are his struggling thoughts on the nature of Life and the possible physical principles that underlie Biology. These were clarified and finally published by Schrodinger in a truly seminal and widely influential work 'What is Life?', published in 1944, some years after 'A Game with Sharpened Knives' ends.

Schrodinger had a peripatetic career, spending time in many European Universities. In 1936 he came back to an Austria threatened by Hitler. When the country was annexed by Nazi Germany, Schrodinger had to flee, and after a few years in Oxford and Ghent, he was offered, and accepted a position at the Institute of Advanced Studies, newly set up by the Irish Government headed by the nationalist De Valera, one of the first prime ministers (or Taoiseach - pronounced 'tee schach') of a fully independent Ireland. European politics, Nazi Germany, Irish politics, its uneasy neutrality during the war, and its internal strife, the struggles in Northern Ireland, all these form another interesting and sometimes mysterious thread in the book. There are spies, smugglers and perhaps militant rebels who wander in and out of Schrodinger's life in Dublin, making for a fair amount of dread and anxiety for him personally, for his family and friends, as well as for the reader. 

The main narrative, however, concerns the psychology of Schrodinger as a brilliant, Nobel prize-winning scientist brought to straightened circumstances by historical events, and, perhaps even more so, by his amorous adventures. He is constantly battling what he perceives as his increasing scientific irrelevance - a state of mind that I have personally seen in many of my senior colleagues. At the same time his uncontrollable libido leads him into love affairs with which pleasurably satisfy his immediate urges, but soon degenerate into dilemmas, especially when his lover becomes pregnant by him, in a place - catholic Ireland - and time when abortion, even contraception, and divorce are taboo. Not all his women are as undemanding as his wife, Annemarie, whom he brings to Dublin from Austria, along with his mistress, Hilde. Both these women are friends, and bring up their children together, Hilde representing herself as Annemarie's friend in a fig leaf camouflage. A third woman comes into the story as Schrodinger's Irish lover. She is Sinead, a stage actress, who has a deep, involved relationship with Schrodinger, but gives up on him when she realizes she is pregnant and that the relationship is going nowhere. (This character is apparently modeled on Sheila May, Schrodinger's real life Irish lover.) Throughout, Schrodinger is painfully aware of all his flaws, but unable to correct them, and do the right thing by all his women. It soon becomes an impossible task anyway, considering the contrary demands each relationship makes on him, and Schrodinger, now in his early fifties, is psychologically, if not physically, much the worse for it. The book itself ends with Sinead going away, and Schrodinger going back to his wife and his mistress.

This is a brilliantly written book, dense with characterization and description, with a seamless weaving together of the various elements of Schrodinger's life, science, love, sex and politics. Sometimes it is like listening to jazz music, though with none of the lightness. The writing style is reminiscent of Graham Greene and John Le Carre, more like the former than the latter, in that there is none of the characteristic patterns of speech and dialogue found in Le Carre. Like Greene, Belton writes in a understated, grey and depressed manner, and, like Le Carre, he invokes a 'perpetually drizzling' world in Dublin. Even when he describes a trek undertaken by Schrodinger and Sinead, he describes the earth and the rocks, rather than the sky and the sea, and one gets the impression of dirty rain, though that feature is never actually mentioned.

I wanted to read this book ever since I saw the review by Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books. She calls it 'austere authoritative fiction, a fine melancholy novel...' I cannot state it better. I wish someone could write a similar novel about GNR.